Beautiful Soon Enough

Scissors, Paper, Rock

Scissors, Paper, Rock It swerved through the room, striking a narrow slit into an opening that blinded him in one eye. The sister had thrown her scissors at the little boy. No one could forgive her. Just because he had been screaming for them. Her life after that had no rewards. Ever. No one could love a child who had blinded her small brother. The word accident was eventually eliminated. She was a limb, cut. They could not look at her. And the 172 berdeshevsky little boy was sainted. Worshipped for his pain. It was when they were both grown that the sister came to him, begging. And he said maybe. Come back in a week. While he meditated on what he would do, the brother performed one of his many small and obsessive activities. Seated calmly at his hand-carved mahogany desk, he prepared a stack of blank sheets and carefully he folded each, in the right way. He lit the lamp with a high intensity bulb, focused. Then he removed a fine and sharp and silver scissors from the top left drawer and set to work: like strings of paper dolls, he produced the linked shapes, orbs, linked one to one. And then the colored pencils, these he used to draw and color in each eye, with a perfectionist’s detail. And when he had finished his project, he placed and hung the strings of cutouts in garlands around his office. Still, he had not decided on an answer. She’d return in a week. By then he would know what to say. He locked his office door and did not reopen it until the appointed morning. He was an orderly man. A well-dressed man. A wealthy man. His good eye was the color of a dragonfly’s wing, iridescent. His glass eye, carefully washed, carefully replaced every night with an attendant and very quiet curse, was in fact a pretty object. Not very different from the king-sized marbles which he had won and collected for many years. One such marble was something he always carried in a pocket. Not vaunting it. But because. It was ten o’clock. A summer morning. It was raining. And his sister was at his door. He let her in, saw her shudder as she observed his macabre or playful handiwork, which was it—strung from all angles. He allowed her to stand for a long time, and she did not take any liberty toward his room. She waited, as she had since they were angry siblings. And after—cut by the ones whose bloodlines she shared. She wanted to be forgiven. This morning, she was not. She saw that now. Blackening, her plea was going to be refused. And then, the boy who would not give scissors, paper, rock 173 her what she needed, gave her his prized object. White and cool and round and perfect, from his pocket to her hand. He waited until she had closed her fingers around it and held it silently. Waited until she cried for the first time in thirty years. Then, one by one, he took down his paper cut-out decorations and carefully he folded them and these he gave to her as well. She had not moved. No words between them. Ever. Or any who could speak for them. Severed, she walked in the rain. Hindsight and its pruned branch, and the white perfect marble in her chapped hand. ...